If New Year’s resolutions are something you’ve struggled with, you’re in good company. At the beginning of a new year, many of us feel pressure to fix ourselves or do better. Pema Chödrön has a beautiful quote where she talks about self-improvement as a kind of subtle aggression against who we really are. Sometimes as meditators we can get into that neighborhood. We make our meditation a project, and we relate to ourselves as a project that needs fixing. We can feel that imbalance when we’re pushing too hard, when there’s that subtle aggression.
That phrase—“against who we really are”—has always gotten my attention. Who are we really? When we meditate, we see the changing flow and stream of phenomena that we often take to be “me” and “mine,” that we take to be a self. And that flow of phenomena is here and now. There’s a phrase we use: the Dharma is ehipassiko—come and see for yourself. Any given moment, when met with mindfulness, can be a Dharma doorway into the truth of things as they actually are.
What’s not an illusion is this flow. But the “I-me-mine” making, the selfing around it, the identification with what’s happening as “me” and “mine”—that’s the illusion. There’s a line from a poem by Rilke that stays with me: “I am the rest between two notes.” Who are we when we sit down to meditate and experience the relief of dropping that endless “I-me-my” making? The mind is constantly concocting, putting experience together, interpreting it, identifying with it. Even if it’s just thirty minutes where you put that down, there’s a rest in that. The perpetuation of a self, and the project of constantly improving the self, is exhausting.
So we practice the middle way—setting wise intentions from love and wisdom rather than aversion or endless self-improvement. We do that by staying present, moment by moment, whether it’s pleasant or unpleasant. That takes patience. Patience, as Ajahn Sucitto describes it, is holding the heart still in the presence of its suffering until it lets go of the ways it creates that suffering. This is the nature of practice: we see dukkha, we stay present with the reactive mind, and over time, wisdom lets go—not “me,” not a self doing it, but insight itself.
As the heart-mind lets go, intention changes naturally. Compassion and loving-kindness arise. We see the value of letting go of craving. The Buddha encouraged us to know our own hearts and minds directly—to see cause and effect clearly. When we practice in silence, the mind settles, like sediment in a glass of water, and clarity becomes possible. Wise intention means starting where we are, letting things be as they are, and seeing clearly what’s not serving well-being. Letting go happens naturally; it’s not forced.
Howard Thurman wrote, “There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have.” As we make space, we begin to hear that sound. And intention becomes a rudder—it helps us notice when we’ve gone off course and gently return. The Buddha taught three wise intentions: letting go, goodwill, and harmlessness. These counteract craving, ill will, and cruelty. These are the places we practice wise intention.
So you might just pause and let this settle. Get interested in clinging and craving. Notice how it shows up as grabbing or pushing away. Allow the heart and mind to be still in the presence of those patterns. See them clearly.
Thank you for your kind attention.
Warmly,
Celeste
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